Data-Driven Nutrition Used by the NFL May Help Solve the Military's Obesity Problem

Results from the 2018 Health-Related Behaviors Survey found that 15.1% of active-duty service members were classified as obese. Meanwhile, the armed services are facing their biggest recruiting problem in 50 years, with Pentagon data revealing 77% of American youths between the ages of 16 and 24 can't join the military, mostly due to being overweight.

Sean Harrington, the CEO and co-founder of Notemeal, believes his company's platform can help service members and recruits get into fighting shape and stay there. Harrington played football at Tufts University, where he studied engineering. His move to the NFL wasn't as a player; he went to the New England Patriots as the league's first software engineer.

"We were building all sorts of in-house applications for the coaching staff," Harrington tells Military.com. "Every player on the team had a digital workout. Seven days a week, here's your workout, right on your phone. At the same time, we get introduced to a sports dietitian. … I'm thinking, 'Why doesn't every guy on the team also have a meal plan?'"

Harrington and his new software team decided to build an efficiency tool for the dietitian. Suddenly, the New England Patriots were receiving their meal plans from the dietitian directly to their mobile device. When Harrington left the Patriots after the 2019 season, he founded Notemeal with the direction of providing the same efficiency to U.S. service members that 15 NFL teams and 40 NCAA Division I athletic departments now currently enjoy.

It has nothing to do with how Tom Brady manages his diet, but it has the dedication to outcomes that he and many other athletes share.

"If you think about it, we're trying to squeeze one more percent of performance out of our NFL athletes through nutrition," Harrington says. "But the mission of the service members is way more important. There's one dietitian for 80 guys on a football team. In the military, in even just one of the special operations units, they've got one dietitian for 3,000 service members, and that's the best-case scenario. There's way more opportunity to have an impact for the people there, let alone the mission set."

Notemeal allows a unit's certified, credentialed dietitian to build and develop nutrition plans for service members via a mobile app, just like those used by the NFL. The dietitian uses physical information, such as age, height, body composition and gender, to create the plans. For military personnel, the dietitian is also able to customize the diet based on physical demands, like their military specialty, physical training or qualification courses they might be attending.

"The service member gets a ping, they open their phone up and there's their personalized meal plan," Harrington says. "They're able to see macronutrient targets, meal suggestions and recipes, and they have the ability to directly communicate with their dietitian. The meals are gonna be tailored and responsive to how active you are and what type of activity that is."

The software is catching the eyes of some U.S. military units already. It currently works with over 30,000 service members and 40 dietitians across U.S. Special Operations Command, and is expanding into other forces, including the Army's 82nd Airborne Division and the Air Force's 19th Air Education and Training Command.

"Some of the things we've been able to focus on as a small company may not be as sexy as what an Apple might do," Harrington says. "But we're able to build and issue meal plans at mass scale in an affordable way for the U.S. military, because it's really important."

Notemeal is not available as a direct-to-consumer application, but is available to organizations with a registered dietitian. Organizations looking for more information can find it or request a demo at the Notemeal website.

-- Blake Stilwell can be reached at blake.stilwell@military.com. He can also be found on Twitter @blakestilwell or on Facebook.

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